Apple Harvest Festival to feature 40 musical acts

The Sarah Lemieux Quintet won the Connecticut Music Award for Best Jazz Band and will play at the Apple Harvest Festival in Glastonbury on Oct. 18. Courtesy Photo.

The Sarah Lemieux Quintet won the Connecticut Music Award for Best Jazz Band and will play at the Apple Harvest Festival in Glastonbury on Oct. 18. Courtesy Photo.

Steve Smith, Staff WriterReminder News

Glastonbury's Apple Harvest Festival will totally rock this year. As part of celebrating the fest's 40th anniversary, the event will also feature 40 musical acts throughout the three days.

Glastonbury Chamber of Commerce Marketing and Communications Director Chip McCabe is using the expertise he had from working to create the Connnecticut Music Awards and coordinating the Grand Band Slam event while working for CT1 Media's Hartford Advocate and other publications.

McCabe also previously worked for a record label, so he knows the music industry well.

"We did a lot of sponsoring of major festivals across the country, which is where I kind of cut my teeth on that type of thing," he said. "I've also been booking shows, on varying scales, for a long time just on my own. I've worked with a lot of different artists on a lot of different ventures. It's kind of a natural fit to take that music stuff that I've been doing and take it over here to the Chamber."

McCabe said the Chamber wanted to grow the event and do something with it. So, he contacted several musical acts from across the state. "There are a lot of really talented artists in Connecticut," he said, "in general, and in this central part of the state."

Acts from Glastonbury, as well as South Windsor and Manchester will perform at the festival. Besides looking for home-grown Nutmegger bands, McCabe said the goal was to find a cross-section of musical genres.

"It runs the gamut from hip-hop and reggae, to indie rock, to country, blues, and jazz," he said. "We tried to make it as ecclectic as possible, and as wide-reaching as possible. We wanted to make sure we had something for everybody."

Bonsai Trees is a band comprised of Glastonbury and South Windsor High Schools, while the Guinea Pigs – a group which happened to play the festival last year—has a drummer who owns Cycling Conecpts in Glastonbury. Johnny Mainstream is a band from Manchester.

Many of the groups were also selected by McCabe because they were winners of Connecticut Music Awards, including the "Best Blues" winner, the Balkun Brothers and "1974" which took the Best Overall Band this past year. "They're more like a prog-rock," McCabe said.

The bands will play at three stages, including the Vendor Village stage, the Welcome stage near the main entrance, and at the Harvest Pub (in the festival's beer garden). Each band will play a 30-minute set.

"There will be music running literally all day and into the evening," McCabe said. "While one stage is dark, another will be running, and it will be bouncing back and forth all day long, with music pretty much non-stop."

McCabe added that many of the acts jumped at the chance, because the Apple Harvest Festival is known as a prestigious event. The Apple Harvest Festival takes place Oct. 17, 18 and 19 at Riverfront Park.